


The Love We Deserve

by tactfulGnostalgic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Game Over Timeline, Introspection, Killing, POV Vriska Serket, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Retcon Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 02:45:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9102994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tactfulGnostalgic/pseuds/tactfulGnostalgic
Summary: "Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible."-Virginia WoolfeThis is where it ends.You and her stand on a meteor together and you always knew it would come down to this. For all her powers, you had more foresight. She was always going to be the death of you, because that's the only way you know how to express love, in your husk of a heart.





	

> _"Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible."_
> 
> _-Virginia Woolfe_

i.

A good lie has multiple components. First, there is the basic fiction: the statement of what is not true. An example, pulled from your early childhood: "I love spiders." This is what hooks the recipient, what seeds the ground for future deception. It isn't enough, though. This is why you are better than other liars; you understand that expression is not enough. You must evidence the deceit. Part two: a typing quirk. Unnoticeable at first, and not excessive - it doesn't distort your speech, it doesn't make your text hard to read. Nobody bothers counting your punctuation marks, but if they did, they would find themselves amazed at your dedication to thematic consistency. See? Nobody expects that kind of dedication from a liar. The funniest misconception you've ever confronted is that liars are lazy. No. Liars have to work twice as hard as anybody else. You cannot for one moment assume the benefit of the doubt.

Part three is the most difficult. Part three is attempted only by the best, for you are the best, and nobody seems to realize this. And it is this: Convince yourself that you are telling the truth.

Convince yourself that you love spiders with every ounce of your being. Gush over everything that has to do with them, slip in references everywhere you can. Type with 8's and even in moments of agitation, do not let your guard slip. Spin your lies until nobody knows who you were before you started telling them, and then, like a spider, wrap yourself in your own web.

 

ii.

Terezi Pyrope is unlike anybody you've ever met.

You'd been killing trolls for sweeps. You threw up after your first kill; you kept doing so after the first five, ten, fifteen. In the early days, it would take you hours to get the wherewithal to deliver the killing blow. You learned rapidly that it's best to set traps and then spring them from afar, so you don't have to hear them beg. You learned how to be deadly, not out of malice, but because it is so much kinder to kill quickly than to draw it out.

Terezi Pyrope has no such questions. She has never considered whether killing can be a kindness; to her, killing is a punishment, and only for those sorely in need of punishment. At four sweeps old, she had a moral compass stronger than anyone you'd ever met or have met since. Who did she think she was? She was raised by an egg. She grew up alone in a treehouse. And she had the audacity to tell you that killing indiscriminately was wrong. To tell you that there was a better way to feed your lusus. She had no idea what happened in your home. Terezi Pyrope, for all that she bragged about her intuition, still couldn't see through you.

But she was the only person who ever acted like you had a choice. Like you could be better than you are. _"Choose not to kill, Vriska,"_ and, _"We don't kill the good guys, Vriska,"_ and you wanted to ask her - how does she know who's good? You never had the privilege of such distinctions before. It's always your life or theirs. Kill or be killed. The idea of justice is as childish as that of freedom.

She gets you to share things with her. You tell her about Mindfang. You let her roleplay with you as Redglare. You shared the journals with her, shared the responsibility of killing with her, FLARPed with her and offered her your hive and your home and your heart and prayed she wouldn't notice you, loving her. You don't get that kind of thing, not with your life. Killers don't get to love people like Terezi Pyrope.

She is so good and she believes so much in everybody. She believes that you can leave Spidermom and she believes that you can stop killing and she believes that there's a person under what you show everyone else, believes in justice in a cruel world and believes that you could be something great and believes that you two belong together. Wrong. On all counts. But you don't tell her that. On your more indulgent days, you let yourself believe that she's right. You've grown good at telling yourself what to believe.

You take Kanaya as a moirail because Kanaya is more like you, and she knows what this world is like, and she doesn't shy away from the dark bits of you. Retrospectively, she was macabrely fascinated by them - the uglier things you do, juxtaposed with her red aspirations. You were two dumb kids who didn't know what quadrants were and it was for the best that it didn't work out, as much as it hurt. Because isn't it just like you to push her away? Isn't it just like you to misread the situation, and fuck up one of the only good things you had going for you by taking advantage of it -

Kanaya leaves you and you don't mourn it, much. When Kanaya dumps you, you tell Terezi about it, and she offers to beat her up a bit.

You promise yourself that if anyone ever hurts her, you'll kill them. You will find them and keep them locked away from anything that ever made them happy, and anyone they ever loved, and string out the most painful punishment you can devise for as many years as you have left. You tell Terezi as much, not in those words, but in saying, "You're safe with me." It's the only thing you can promise her, but you hope it's enough. You don't believe in justice, but for her, you can try.

 

iii.

She takes your left arm and your eye and you take her sight. And as you crawl into Equius' hive, trying desperately to stem the flow of blood, you can hear nothing but the vicious whispers of the spider in your basement, snarling, _You knew this would happen, I told you this would happen, it was always going to happen, it was happening all along. You ruin everything, you ruin everything, you can't keep anybody close to you because you're a fucking monster just like your lusus and the only thing you've ever been good for is killing_ -

"Hey, neighbor," you try, offering Equius the best smile you can, and then you lie, because that's what a spider does when she's trapped. She lies and lies and lies until she collapses and somebody takes pity on her, picks her up and tosses her outside. It's not mercy. A mercy would have been for him to take his bow and put an arrow through your temple so you didn't have to think any more of Terezi's numb red eyes, or the way her face tightened when she smelled you near. A mercy would have been to dump your body near your lusus' and then set the entire castle on fire, so the last thing you see is the 8itch burning to the ground and screaming in pain and fear and it would feel so good, wouldn't it, to see her in agony, to see her desperate and dying and then lifeless and dead.

Thoughts like that are why Terezi Pyrope is done with you, and now that she's done with you, you give yourself free range to think them again. They rush back into your head and mingle pleasantly with each other. Fantasies of every way the Fluorite Octet could end the life of a giant spider.

But Equius isn't a merciful person by nature, and he fixes you up with a new arm and a sweet eyepatch as an afterthought. And you thank him as much as you can. Which is to say, you toss a casual "thanks, n8bor" over your shoulder as you leave, rejuvenated and aware of your lusus' newfound hunger. When her whispering gets louder, you shut your eyes and cover your ears and sprint to the uppermost room in your castle, where you ignore her for a whole six hours as you sit down and think of Terezi Pyrope, and what she would want you to do.

Then you spend three hours writing out how you are going to apologize to Aradia. You brainstorm all the things you could give her (your first instinct is some FLARP advantages, maybe one of your nicer ships, but she doesn't play anymore), and how best to word your apology (the floor of your room becomes carpeted with blue lettering from your preparations). In the end, you do the only thing you can, and offer to be her friend again. Offer to help. She doesn't accept you, because (why would she, why would anyone want to be your friend, you piece of shit useless monst-) she's already gotten over it, so you just leave her alone. That seems to be what she wants you to do.

AA: y0ure just n0t getting it  
AA: y0u never listen

Reading that makes you stop and laugh out loud. And cry a little bit. And then keep laughing. How could anyone look at you and think you don't listen? You listen to everything. You hear everything they say about you, especially when they don't even bother to hide their fucking contempt. You can hear everything they say behind your back because _she_ tells you. The woman in your basement. She never shuts up about it, as a matter of fact.

But after you're done, you wipe your eyes and stand up and leave your hive, because your lusus is hungry and the world hasn't ended yet. You keep your head held high and your collar up, because you don't have anyone watching your back anymore. Hair wild as the ocean on a bad day, weapon drawn. A killer with a quick hand and a sharp tongue. So nobody likes you. That's fine; you'll be the spider8itch, if that's what they want. It didn't matter to you, anyway.

 

iv.

You flirt with John, even as you know with a sinking feeling that this is a path you've gone down before.

You have a theory that you're naturally drawn to good people. John is, after all, indubitably good. You're not sure how you can tell this, except that every decision he makes he seems certain is the right one. He never doubts himself. But he's doubtless in the way that good people are; he would never do something if he thought it would hurt someone. You are so tempted to put him in a position where he'd have to. See what the perfect boy would do then, huh, when it was hurt or be hurt in return. (You want - you need - him to make the same choice that you would. You are terrified that he wouldn't.)

John reminds you a lot of Terezi. He's funny and weird and he likes really awful movies, and _man_ is his home strange, but the kind of vague innocence that clings to even his most benign remarks hits you squarely in the chest. He believes so casually in the idea of good. He's not just a hero, but a good person, too, and that's all you ever wanted. But if being a good person isn't possible, you decide to be a hero, instead. For him. For Terezi. For everyone who thought you were a one-note villain who'd eventually either fade into irrelevancy or die a Just Death - you decide to spit in all their eyes, and be the best fucking hero they've ever seen. You'll die for them. That's the only way you'll die, you decide, you'll die for them, and then they'll have to consider you a hero. You'll die for Karkat and Kanaya and Eridan and even fucking Gamzee, you don't give a shit. You will be remembered, not as a mildly inconvenient nuisance who was rightly ended, but as someone worth talking about. Someone Terezi might have been proud of.

Terezi kills John, and inadvertently or not, it tickles you. In indulgent moments, you play with the idea that she killed him out of jealousy. It's not like you haven't considered doing the same thing with Dave. It would be so easy. A few misleading words, a simple lie, send him to fight an enemy he's not ready for. The Game makes it so easy to die.

But you wouldn't. It would make her sad. You heard her reaction to the other Dave's death. She can kill John because she knows you don't really care about him, or at least, not in the way that you pretend to. But Terezi gets more attached than you do to your pawns. She always has. And because you're better than her at this game you two play, and because you understand how to be a bad person and also be kind, you spare Dave Strider.

John God Tiers, and you feel a distant sort of pride. If your lusus were still alive, it would be the kind of thing you'd mutter to her while bringing food: _Hey, you know what I did today? I made a kid immortal. Basically gave him insurance against anything the Game could throw his way. How's that for something worthwhile?_

She'd say, _What, you? With your luck, he'll be dead in a few days._

"Fuck you," you say aloud, staring at the blue-hooded boy on your screen, digging your nails into the control panel. "Fuck you - fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, he's going to be _great_ -"

"Vrithka?" Sollux is squinting at you from the next table over. "What the fuck?"

"Fuck off, Sollux," you say coldly, because you're not in the mood to pretend you care about him or his opinion. You push away from the computer and make a beeline for the doorway, ready to go beat up on something deep in the meteor. You pass Terezi in the entryway and refuse to look at her.

She touches your elbow and you skid to a halt, bending into her hand. It's a gentle touch. She was always so gentle with you. She could be hard and the best fighter of any of you useless fucks or she could be soft and ridiculously caring and you can't figure out how she can fit both personalities inside her.

"Hi," she says quietly. "Where are you going?"

You're not sure if it's because she's curious or because she doesn't trust you. "Out," you say stiffly. "Is that okay with you, Pyrope?"

Her shoulders sag and she lets your arm go. You watch her approach one of the computers and sit down, pull up her Trollian. Pages and pages of red text fly up on her screen and suddenly you hate Dave Strider.

"He doesn't know you."

She looks over her shoulder tiredly.

"He doesn't have a clue who you are or what you've done. He can't love you, either."

You expect her to yell at you. You relish it, really. But she doesn't, because she is Terezi Pyrope and she never does what you expect her to.

"I know," she says, and turns away.

It stuns you. And it dawns on you that she doesn't have any friends either, really, on this godforsaken rock. But it doesn't matter, because it's his red on her wall, and that's her choice and she's made it. It's only after five minutes of silence that you find the motivation to leave. After that, you spend hours breaking everything within range, 8-balls and fenestrated walls and computer panels and large glass jars that shatter over the floor of your room until there is nothing left to break.

 

v.

This is where it ends.

You two stand on a meteor together and you always knew it would come down to this. For all her powers, you had more foresight. She was always going to be the death of you, because that's the only way you know how to express love, in your husk of a heart.

She thinks that this is some misbegotten plan to claim glory, and she's right, to an extent. You want to be remembered. You want to be important. You've never been important to anybody but her. It'd be nice to know Kanaya would remember you as a savior, not the asshole that broke her heart. Nice to one-up Eridan once and for all. Nice to show Tavros what real courage looks like. But mostly, it's her safety that keeps you on the edge of the meteor.

That, and the sword she's pointing at you. Which doesn't hurt you so much as her face, which is blank and cold and judges you dispassionately behind scarlet glasses. Glasses the red of her eyes, blank by your doing. An outfit that you designed for her, based on scrawls in Mindfang's journal. She has on the outfit she wore when you would judge your victims together as the Scourge Sisters, and unexpectedly, it hurts. You're not her partner anymore, are you? You're the defendant in her sick mock trial, and she is lawyer, judge, and jury.

Terezi has never, not once in your life, looked at you dispassionately. There's always been exasperation, or fondness, or whatever else you can get her to feel for you, so long as she feels something. Anything is better than apathy. So long as you're important to her to some degree, so long as she cares, you don't give a fuck if it's pale or red or black or ashen, as long as someone gives a shit whether you live or die.

She doesn't, now. It's so clear to you. She has always been good. It was you that made her choose between you and the others, and it wasn't like there was ever a question what choice she'd make.

Choice, you think, watching the coin turn in the air. What's choice? Terezi gets choices, and she squanders them on coin flips and second chances. You just do what needs to be done, over and over and over.

You turn from her when the coin falls, but you do not for one second believe that she will let you live. You indulge yourself by imagining her struck with some wave of sentimentality, wherein she finds herself incapable of doing you harm, and lets you go in peace. But such things are not characteristic of Terezi Pyrope, nor would you want them to be. When the blade enters your back, it is cold and sudden and every bit expected.

You will say this for her: she makes it quick. Maybe she learned something from watching you do it, all those years. Terezi Pyrope, you discover, is just, but also kind.

* * *

 You run across your fair share of dead Terezi's, wandering about in the Dream Bubbles, and you try to keep out of their way. It just gets complicated, trying to talk to them. There are some timelines where you ended up in a relationship. Some where you were black for each other. Some flushed. Some where you stayed together your whole lives, some where you went mad with grief after she died. None of them are happy stories. You keep to yourself and keep quiet about your own experiences. It's better that way.

It's a mild day on the beaches of the afterlife when you run into a Terezi who, put kindly, won't give it a fucking rest. She follows you from where you appeared in the Dream Bubble through three more, badgering you about your timeline, where you're going, where you've been. She's nothing like your Terezi, who would've recognized in an instant that you needed space, and left you well enough alone. Or maybe she would've done what this one is doing. Who knows, with Terezi? Not you.  
"Vriska?" She's floating alongside you in God Tier garb, which, funnily enough, you are, too. It's what you use to remind yourself that she isn't yours, that she doesn't know you, nor you, her.

"What?"

"How did you die?"

"I don't see how that's any of your business."

"I'm curious! Humor me?"

"No."

"Come on."

" _No._ "

"What do you have to lose?"

"I don't want to tell you. Lay off it."

"Not a chance."

"You _killed_ me," you spit. "Okay? We lined up for a big fucking dramatic showdown, and I turned my back on you and you killed me. Are you satisfied?"

She looks taken aback for only a split second before she cackles, loud and delirious, just like your girl would. "Wow! What a coincidence!"

"What's so funny?"

"Well," she says, rubbing teal tears from the edges of her eyes, "the thing is - and this is funny -"

"What?"

"You killed me, too."

_"What?"_

You've never met a Terezi you killed. You wouldn't. You just wouldn't. There is precious little that is integral to your multifaceted lie of a personality, but the cardinal belief - the only thing you believe - is that Terezi Pyrope, for all her faults, is the only unacceptable sacrifice.

She shrugs, offers up her palms, smiles. "Didn't expect that one, did you?"

"No, I - why the fuck would I - why did she kill you?"

She rubs the back of her neck. "I stood in her way. I was going to do something stupid that would have killed everybody." Her head tips to the side, apologetic, frank. "She did what she had to."

"There had to have been another way."

"Vriska doesn't believe in 'other ways.' Seems to be consistent across timelines, come to think of it."

"What were you going to _do_?"

"Fight Jack Noir," she says. "I was dressed up in my gear, swords out, ready to go, and she - she came up on top of the meteor, and told me what she'd do if I kept going. And I didn't think she would. And she did."

"She did," you repeat.

"Yeah. Should've known, really. Vriska never lied, really, y'know? Not to me."

You laugh bitterly. "Didn't she?"

"No," Terezi says. She is unwavering in her belief, even after you killed her. "Never to me."

"Oh, well. If you want to believe that."

"It's not that I want to believe it, I do." Her hands curl into fists. "You don't know a thing about my Vriska."

"More than you do, apparently." You're being cruel. You don't care.

"Did you ever lie to me? In your timeline?"

"Yes. Hundreds of times."

"That's not true," she says. "That's not true. You - you wouldn't have lied to me."

You start walking away from her as fast as you can. "You buy that?"

"You never needed to. Vriska? Vriska! We don't lie to each other!"

"Whatever you want to think."

"Vriska!" Is she crying? You don't look. "Vriska, you - I'm sorry! I wouldn't have killed you, I wouldn't - if it had been me, I don't know your me, but if it were me - I wouldn't have done it."

"That doesn't help me now, does it?"

"I'm sorry!" She has to yell to be heard. You reach the edge of the Dream Bubble, where purple trees glide into a strange sequence of metal platforms and lava rivers. A land you haven't seen except on monitors, and you'll bet anything there's a dead Dave hanging around here. It puts all the more spring in your step to get away from the dead Terezi.

"I'm sorry I - wherever I am," she says. "I bet I am. You're better off without me than I am without you."

"Bullshit."

"It's not," she says, but you're already out of range. Ghosts cleave a path for you like the sea before the bow of a ship. You leave her behind, that Terezi, and spend a full day trying to forget everything she said.

  
vii.

John doesn't give you the Ring, because why would he? As you well know, you're a danger to yourself and others. If you were John, you wouldn't give it to you, either.

Oh, you make a fuss of it, sure. It's not like you wouldn't love to be alive again, and frankly, you can't think of any other ghost that would be better suited to reanimation. None of them are exactly itching to get anything done, here. You have the brains and the brawn to do shit. But you know, really, that John's judgment on this is best. He's always made the right choice, even if you don't agree with him. And now he's making the choice not to trust you. So that's that, really.

And then everybody leaves. And you can't say you don't expect it. The writing was on the wall from Day One with you. You can pull people in so easily, but you can't keep them there. A spider can catch a hundred flies, but she can't keep them alive. She eats them or she sets them free. You watch Tavros float up out of your life through a hole in the cave, and you think of Pupa Pan, soaring away from all his problems. Trapped in eternal childhood. You think of fairytales and heroes and how Tavros, weak piece of shit that he is, at least has the guts to leave a situation when it heads south. You don't. You just cling to your mistakes until you're dead and suffering from them, unwilling to change. Probably incapable, come to think of it. The departure of other members of your party only confirms your suspicions.

You have become finely skilled in the art of not thinking about Terezi Pyrope. How she smiles. How her eyes glint when she's got an idea. How her body moves when she's kicking somebody's ass (it's the hottest thing you've ever seen), how she grins when she's just figured out the answer to some ludicrously complicated problem or has decided someone's fate. No, you don't think about Terezi, or the gentle touches she left around your shoulders and hands, how her body temperature was always a touch warmer than yours, a natural result of your respective places on the hemospectrum. These are the things you don't think about, no, not at all.

Instead, you think about Meenah Peixes. She's hard and angry and funny at all the right times, with a tongue sharper than steel and a heart colder than the Condesce's blood. She doesn't shy away from what she's done. Yeah, she made the wrong choices, but she did what needed to be done. And she doesn't give a fuck, Meenah, so much stronger than you ever were, so much wilder and louder and prouder of herself. Fuck responsibility, Meenah tells you. Fuck your ghosts, fuck your duties, fuck justice and law and order and _fuck_ anybody who tells you that you have an obligation to anyone but yourself.

You don't so much fall in love with her as you fall in love with the idea of being like her. She'd have killed a lusus like yours first chance she got and ran from Imperial Drones, society be damned. She'd have taken your lot and turned it into something fantastic. She's a thief, just like you. Takes what she can, gives nothing back. It is so comforting, after all these sweeps, to find someone like you who doesn't hate herself for it.

So, you think, yes. Fuck responsibility. You are not indebted to the living, any more than they're indebted to you. Who cares if they all die? Who cares if _you_ die? It's not like you'll notice - you'll be dead. Lord English can have this shitty fucking universe, you think, and you wish him every unhappiness and miserable shitty situation that comes with it.

At least, until you show up. You always find a way to ruin everything for yourself.

The real you, the living you, shows up and tears you to pieces, explains to you in livid detail everything wrong with you like she can read your mind. She steals your matesprit and your treasure and goes off to do the things you were incapable of doing. And it turns out, hey, Meenah doesn't like herself either. Because nobody would ever like a person like you, not even another person like you.

Bile rises in your throat, thinking about the way the other you talked. Didn't she hear herself? Didn't she realize how much she sounded like _her_?

But you _are_ just like her. You're a spider8itch, remember? 

You walk into the broken Dream Bubbles and think of Terezi.

And then - and then - she is there, and nothing else matters. She's there, with her soft gentle eyes - white, not red, but that doesn't matter because she's never needed to look at you to understand - and the strange little cowlick over her left temple that you'd forgotten. Only looking at her do you realize how much you forgot.

When she looks at you, she doesn't look angry, or resigned, but fiercely glad, and she reaches for you. Then she's holding you, and oh. Oh. It's so nice.

She wraps her arm tightly around her shoulders, and you lean into her. Thoughts of Terezi overwrite everything you were thinking before. They always have.

The sky shatters into rainbow-pulsing cracks, and you watch it go calmly, peacefully. In the end, she wasn't the death of you; she dies holding you in her arms, and you die holding her in yours, and it is, you think, the only ending you can accept.

 

i.

No.

It ends like this.

John punches you and saves your fucking life, because he's John, and he always makes the right decisions. You stay on that damned meteor, and you stay with her, and you refuse to let anyone take it away from you.

The first thing you do - after everyone is settled on the meteor, and the humans are squirreled away, and Dave has finally fucked off and left Terezi alone - is walk up to her and say, "I'm sorry."

"What?" She cocks her head. "What for?"

"For fucking you over. For the revenge bullshit. For almost making you kill me. A lot of shit, and it'd take me a while to go over all of it, but. I'm sorry."  
"Do you think that's going to make everything better?" She's frowning. She knows a liar when she hears one, and you guess it's fair for her to be suspicious, after hearing you lie this long.

"Probably not. But I've got irons in the fire." You add, "I'm smiling. Kind of pathetically, actually. Like, if you could see, you'd be super disgusted with how sappy I'm being, holy shit."

It's not a confession so much as it's a prelude to a confession, and she recognizes it as such. "Apology accepted," she says, with a cheerfulness that doesn't reach her face. "Help me pick a new room, Rose took mine."

* * *

 

She tells you that Aranea offered to give her sight back and you nearly punch through a wall. You make her promise only to go to sleep at the same time as you, and she agrees. The next time you see your waste of a Dancestor, you get her in a headlock before she can so much as say a word. You hold her down until she promises to leave Terezi well enough alone, and then for a few minutes after that, to impress upon her exactly how little of her shit you are willing to take. Terezi doesn't need fixing. She sure as hell doesn't need anybody telling her she needs to be fixed.

After that, you don't see hide nor hair of Aranea Serket for a sweep and a half, and when she does return, she keeps her distance from you. To that extent, you stick close to Terezi's side in all the Dream Bubbles, sending periodic glares at anybody who looks at her funny. This has the added benefit of synchronizing yours and Terezi's sleep schedules. You wake up when she does, go to sleep when she does. You spend the day together on the meteor and then meet again in the Dream Bubbles. It's hard to think of an hour of the day that you don't spend with, near, or thinking about Terezi Pyrope. It probably says something that this is the happiest you've ever been in your life.

* * *

You beat up Gamzee together and it feels like victory.

He's trying to make his shitty blackrom moves on Terezi in the hallway when you catch him, and your first instinct is to put a sword through his gut, but you forgot your dice in your room when you last left it, so you have to settle for coming at him like a freight train and hoping your palpable fury is enough to compensate for your lack of any real weaponry.

You're cussing him out already when you come within earshot, and he looks up, his eyes glazed the same angry orange-reddish that they've been for half a sweep, now. Terezi is glaring at him, and when you catch her eye, she nods subtly. You pull back long enough to surprise him, and then she flips up her legs and gives him a good, solid kick to the gut, sending the fucker reeling. You grab him by the shoulder and finish him off, relishing the wheeze of pain he gives when your knee contact.

"Fuckin' asshole clown-ass looking motherfucker," you spit at him, and then punch Terezi comfortingly on the shoulder. "Good job, TZ, fuck him up."

She smirks at you, punches you in return. And that's all there is to it. You may go back, after he's locked in the refrigerator, and threaten to remove everything that makes Makara a troll in excruciating detail, but if you do, she never hears of it. It's only days afterwards, when she's chilling in your room, that she mentions it to you with anything but genial fondness.

"He, uh," she begins, "he wanted to be my kismesis."

"Yeah?" You're flipping through Mindfang's more lurid journals while she uses your computer. "What about it?"

"Well." She fiddles with her hands. "I kind of - I thought about it?"

"Why?"

"Because he annoys me. So I figured, what'd be the harm in - in having a quadrant filled? Everyone else seems to." She's playing a game of thumb-war with herself. "Rose and Kanaya, and - and Dave with Karkat. I could feel black for Gamzee, I think."

"Yeah, but he's ass, though," you say, unable to stop yourself. "He'd be a shitty kismesis, right? I mean, Karkat annoys me, too, but that doesn't mean I wanna be in a  _quadrant_ with him."

"I feel like -"

"Hey, hey," you say urgently, tossing the journal on the couch. "Hey, Terezi, if you wanna - if you want a kismesis, like - I know it's slim pickings around here, but don't - don't lower your standards like that. I mean, like." You bounce your knee. "If you're looking for a rivalry that bad, well. As the only person who's actually _been_ in a blackrom on this meteor, I can give you . . . I could be a lot better for you than Gamzee could. If that's what you're looking for."

"Are you offering to be my kismesis?" She tilts her head at you. You wish you could read her thoughts. 

"If that's what you want." You shrug, spread your open hands. "You could probably get a letter of recommendation from a dead Eridan, if you wanted? Ha. It's not like we're strangers to the whole rivalry thing anyway. I'm not saying we were great at it the first time around, but -"

"I don't feel black for you," she says. "I don't think I can."

"Oh," you say suddenly. "Oh. Okay. That's."

"Do you want to know why?" She folds her legs.

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm pale for you," she says thoughtfully, simply.

"Oh," you say. "Oh."

"Are you pale for me, too?" She lifts her eyebrows. 

You don't say what you're thinking, which is  _Yes, and a whole lot of other things, too,_ but you nod. "Sure. Yeah. That - you wanna be moirails?"

"I think so."

"Sweet. Let's be moirails."

She nods, smiles softly to herself, and then crawls over to lie in your lap. This isn't new; you two have a lot of contact, nowadays, and only recently did it occur to you that most of it isn't strictly platonic. She paps your cheek lazily, and you grin at her.

"I'm about to be cheesy," she warns you. "Be prepared."

"Gotcha."

She holds up two fingers, making half of a diamond, and waves them at you expectantly. You lift your own two fingers and touch the tips to Terezi's. It's sickeningly cute and it makes you blush.

"Pale as the stars," she says, and you flick her ear.

"Get out of here with that cheesy shit."

" _As the stars,_ " she insists, and then bites your arm, and you fall off the couch tussling with her.

* * *

 

You stand with her on the victory platform, leaning on the fridge holding her violent almost-kismesis, and watch everyone shake with barely contained anxiety about the coming battle. Not you, though. You're still and calm as the unravelling fabric of space, which is to say, apparently so, but only to those who can't see you very well, and certainly not to those who know you.

Example A: Terezi, who laces her fingers through yours and offers you a small smile.

"I couldn't ask for a better moirail," you tell her, and it feels insufficient. But then, anything you say would feel insufficient, wouldn't it? When you're about to die, everything tends to.

"Me neither," she says, squeezing your hand. It feels soft and nice. Something twists in your stomach.

You loved being near her, and you've loved being her favorite person. Her only person. What with the others grouping up, she didn't have anybody but you to hang with. You consider feeling guilty about that, but decide not to. You're about to go fight the big bad, after all. You don't have the time to feel shitty about circumstances out of your control.

But you don't think you're pale for her, really. You don't know. You've never been pale for anyone, actually, so you don't have a damned clue what it feels like; or red, for that matter. The only person you've ever cared about is Terezi, and that's kind of the problem.

"I don't know how I'd have lived with myself," she says slowly, "if I'd have . . . gone through with it." She means killing you, you realize, and you spare a thought for that godforsaken alternate timeline. It's not a long thought, or a happy one.

"And we'd be dead if I hadn't. Thank God for Egbert." 

 _Yeah,_ you think,  _thank God for Egbert._ You look at her, with her pretty red eyes and her pretty white teeth and her pretty sharp horns and you think, _there's probably a me somewhere out her that doesn't need her_ , but you wouldn't recognize that person, if and when you met her.

"Gonna miss you," she says lightly. "Sure you have to get going so soon?"

"Yeah, I really can't waste much more time."  _I could waste hours with you. Sweeps._ "Just have to get these goofballs squared away, and then I'm off." You jerk your chin towards the others on the platform. God knows what they're doing without you.

"Oh."

"Is something wrong?" You reach for her face, tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. It's the kind of soft gesture you wouldn't have thought yourself capable of before the meteor. It's the kind of thing you're still surprised by.

"No." And then she tells you, in so many false self-deprecating words, what's bothering her, and you can't believe it. It's incomprehensible to you, from your perhaps biased point of view, that there could  _be_ a version of Terezi any better than the one sitting in front of you. 

So you tell her so, in so many words. Not the things you should be saying. Not the things you want to tell her. Because the things you want to tell her would end your relationship here and now, and you can't do that to her - you can't break her heart right before you both go off to your possible deaths. You will not hurt Terezi Pyrope, on this day of all days. 

Accordingly, you are as disgustingly pale as you can be. And in the moments before you leave, you catch yourself staring at her.

There are words you want to say to her. Feeling-y things. Things about love and what it means to be a good person, and what it means to be a hero, and what it means to try your best just to achieve one while loving someone who is effortlessly both. 

You want to tell her you love her, and you want to tell her that your entire life has been shaped by that love of her. 

But even if you are a bad person, you are a kind one. So you do what you're good at and lie. 

 

 

viii.

You stare into the eyes of a vicious god and think of Terezi Pyrope.

Knowing the weapon as you do, you probably won't survive its detonation. It's unlikely at best and theoretically impossible at worst. Anything strong enough to take out Lord English has more than enough juice to wipe your tiny blot off the face of existence. And even if you do survive, the session will hopefully be dying around you by the time you succeed. This is, in the best of all possible worlds, the end of your story.

It doesn't bother you as much as it should. 

Oh, it does, certainly. It's not like you love the idea, dying alone, surrounded by hundreds upon thousands of ghosts who neither know nor care about you, flanked by a cruel child Empress and a boy you killed. It doesn't disturb you, though. Nothing can shake your calm right now. You are serene.

You hope Kanaya can get her act together and restart the species promptly, after they win. You hope that when they're telling all those wigglers what's what and how the new world got set up, they talk about you. You don't want much. You've lowered your ambitions over the past few years - you don't expect to be remembered as a hero, much less a goddess. But you'd be satisfied, you think, with a mention now and then. "Vriska Serket - she was there fighting, too," or - "Vriska Serket, she helped make this possible." "Vriska Serket - she had a rough start, but she turned out all right, in the end."

You think about your mom. And you think,  _Fuck you, Mom. You were wrong. You were wrong and now you're dead, and I'm going to save everyone, and I'm not like you and I never will be._

You think about Terezi Pyrope.

And you were right, in the end, because Terezi Pyrope was the death of you. If it wasn't for her you wouldn't be here, holding a box of hope and trying to kill an ancient god with nothing more than your bare hands. 

But for the love of Terezi Pyrope, you do it. You can leverage your life against the odds. Praying and wishing that your sacrifice is enough, because it's the only thing you have left. It's a snowflake's chance in hell, it's an impossible chance, but that's all you've ever needed. 

The sky turns white and everything begins to fade away, including the old god, who screams with his dying breath some vile profanities that you can't be bothered to understand. What a waste of last words. You've done a lot of thinking about last words, and what yours will be. As a kid, you decided they would be something quippy, sharp, profound. Something they'd write down and marvel at in your history books and your descendants would obsess over for years. Your last words would be like the rest of you: bold, important, heroic.

But ultimately, they are none of the above. They are simpler, quieter, shorter. The last words of Vriska Serket are a name, whispered reverently into a fading white sky.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." The quote in its entirety reads, "We accept the love we think we deserve."


End file.
